“Oh, does he?” Gabe’s voice was low and pointed.
Lore scowled at him.
“Hopefully you’re wrong,” Gabe muttered. “If he gets knocked out in a boxing match, maybe he’ll forget the last hour.”
“He also won’t be able to get us into the vaults.”
“We could ask Anton—”
“No.” The very thought made her fingers curl to fists, some cell-deep instinct recoiling. “If something went wrong with that body, I don’t want them to know.”
If something went wrong, Anton and August might stop thinking of her power as an asset. They might start thinking of it as something too dangerous to keep outside a cell.
Maybe too dangerous to keep alive at all.
Gabe’s lips pressed together, his blue eye assessing. Then he nodded.
Bastian ambled easily down the street ahead of them, showing no sign of apprehension. Clearly, this was a regular activity for him. Lore wondered whether he really was a good fighter—people who lost boxing matches on the docks weren’t generally eager to return, and tended to carry physical proof of their failure.
And what if she saw someone she recognized? What if her very fine, albeit out-of-fashion, dressing gown, scrubbed face, and clean, brushed hair weren’t enough to hide who she was? She didn’t look that different, even in an aristocrat’s nightclothes, and more than one acquaintance of hers spent time at the fighting rings.
She’d just have to lie low. Keep close to Gabriel and Bastian, not make eye contact, hope she didn’t attract too much attention.
They exited the mouth of the alley like a reluctant parade, Bastian jaunty in front, Gabe glowering in the back, Lore listlessly caught in the middle. The alley spit them out between two derelict buildings near the harbor front, gas lamps slicking orange light on dark water. A collection of lamps illuminated a shipless dock, the gathering crowd already smelling of beer and sweat. Every one of them wore a mask, some more comprehensive than others. Lore found herself looking at them closely, wondering if she’d passed them in the North Sanctuary.
“Stay close,” Gabe muttered, coming up behind her as Bastian went ahead.
She did. The mass of the Mort next to her was comforting.
The crowd parted for Bastian as he approached the hay-bale-lined ring, but not with any reverence that suggested they knew who he was. They wouldn’t—beyond the walls, the royal family was an abstraction, something that existed but had little day-to-day bearing, regarded with ambivalence bordering on lazy hostility. There was no reason for them to know what Bastian looked like, and in his simple clothes and wrapped fists, stubble on his jaw beneath his simple black mask, he looked just like them.
Now, if there were any nobles in the crowd, they’d be able to spot their prince. But no one spoke up, and Bastian moved with the surety of someone who’d done this many times before. The Sun Prince did what he wanted, and if what he wanted was to get beat up by commoners, no one was going to stop him or blow his cover.
Bastian peeled off his shirt as he walked, handing it to a rather eager-looking man near the edge of the ring with a wink. The prince was as well muscled as Gabriel, slight scars discoloring his skin, half-healed bruises tinted yellow and faded purple.
Gabe and Lore stayed to the back of the crowd, who paid little attention to them. Thankfully, she didn’t see anyone she recognized, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Until she saw Bastian’s opponent.
He stood on the opposite edge of the ring, shaking out bound fists. Already shirtless, familiar bunching muscles, familiar rumpled hair.
Michal.
Lore made a strangled sound as she ducked behind Gabe’s back.
“What?” He looked around, as if there was some threat he hadn’t marked. “Lore, what?”
When Gabe twisted to look behind him, opening a gap between torso and arm that Lore could see through, Bastian was gazing at her, eyes narrowed. Like he’d been waiting for Michal to turn around. Like he’d been waiting to see if she recognized him.
Of course the Sun Prince wouldn’t trust a spy to tell him the truth, even under threat. Of course he’d have a layered plan, one that would show him who she really was.
Not just a spy. The girl from the market square. The necromancer who’d raised Horse. Michal knew what she was—her reaction to him would tell Bastian everything he needed to know.
The Sun Prince watched her like a hawk eyeing a mouse, waiting.
Lore bit her lip, made herself straighten. Made herself look right back at the prince like everything was perfectly fine. “Nothing,” she said to Gabe, who was still glancing around to find some unknown threat. “It’s nothing.”